Consciousness: Know the Elephant by being it

If God was something like an Elephant, but If you never experienced what is an Elephant; how would you describe Him?

As in the picture, every person had a partial “site.” Our senses are partial as well. Some are visual, some use their tact to gain an experience; those differences make our experiences unique.

When we are dealing with Spiritual matters, such as God or a spiritual experience; our physical senses are out. We can visualize, but we know that this visualization or this perception is beyond the typical eyesight. It is beyond the physical realm.

One point which is very important to know is that in Spirituality, everything that we know or experience is related with our level of consciousness.

Why if God is one, there are many religions?
Because there are many perceptions. Different people touching different parts of the Elephant. That perception is equivalent to our consciousness.

If our consciousness is based on previous experiences, then we will use those experiences to explain a newer experience.

“God is a point of light.” We know light. We know what is a point. Mentally we can draw those images. However, those images cannot be equal to what actually exist, for a picture is never the same as the experience.

Please think about this for a while and you will find out that there is an element of uniqueness in every experience and at the same time an element of mystery for not being able to totally know something “new.”

For some individuals, consciousness is equivalent to something “tangible.” For others, it is at the level of the “timeless,” yet for others, consciousness is equivalent to awareness, being a witness without naming; without the “you” and the “I.”

According to that level of consciousness, we will have different understandings as well.

Someone who is living at the level of the “tangible,” will not be able to understand the experience of someone living the “timeless.” This is not a matter of intellectual understanding but it is experiential.

When we hear BapDada or some other person explaining his experience of what a detached observer is or a “witness,” or a “charioteer,” we understand the words that are at our level of experience and with that we pretend to build something which is currently beyond our experience.

We don’t realize that we need to gain a different level of consciousness, that what we want to experience is not in the realm of the “tangible,” the words and definitions.

To gain further consciousness means to go beyond the physicality of our existence. It means to welcome a newer level of subtleness which will allow us to experience something naturally.

We need to start by experiencing the self. That is the only place where we can start without fantasizing, without following ideas or dogmas, without being lead astray into a wild goose chase; it is the only place where our experience is authoritative; where no one could ever know more than us.

For that reason alone, to know the self is the most important item that anyone who calls himself spiritual could ever undertake.